Alteryx Designer Desktop Ideas

I've had several of my users complaining about the Visual Query Builder view after the last couple of releases. When you maximize the window, half of the screen is taken up by blank gray space and there is no way to adjust it and it's very difficult for those who do not know SQL to build their queries in this very small white space. Need to be able to adjust the gray space.

Please add support for windows authentication to the download tool.  I know there's a workaround but that involves using curl and the run command tool.  The run command tool is awful and should be avoided at all costs, so please improve the download tool so I can use internal APIs.

Please extend the Workflow Dependencies functionality to include dependencies of used macros in the worflow too. Currenctly macros are simply marked as dependencies by themselves, but the underlying dependencies (e.g. data sources) of these macros are not included.

We have a large ETL process developed with Alteryx that applies several layers of custom and complex macros and several data sources referenced using aliases. Currently the process is deployed locally (non-server) and executed ad-hoc, but will be moved to the server platform at some point. 

Recently I had to prep an employee for running the process. This requires creating aliases and associated connections and making sure that access to needed network locations is in place (storing macros, temp files, etc.). Hence I needed to identify all aliases and components/macros used. As everything is wrapped nicely by a single workflow, I hoped that the workflow dependencies functionality would cover dependencies in the macro nodes within, but unfortunately it didn't and I had to look through the dependencies of 10-15 macros.

When saving a workflow to the gallery, the manage assets box is a fixed size. Due to the length of our file paths, the full path name is cut off. This makes it difficult when trying to package macros to select the correct box. I understand you can group assets by tool, however with the more complicated workflows this can still present it's challenges. I'd like to see this box to be re-sizeable.

This year, Microsoft updated improve their API (GraphAPI) to access Office365 enviroment.

Alteryx have launched on Microsoft District in Public Gallery the Dataverse , Onedrive & Sharepoint Connectors.

Alteryx must develop as soon as possible an connector/email with same authenticator options as connectors Above and improve the emails settings.

It´s important to release and documentation to show wich permissions on Azure it's necssary to send the emails. 

References:

Microsoft Announce:

https://docs.microsoft.com/pt-br/lifecycle/announcements/exchange-online-basic-auth-deprecated 

Azure Permissions:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/user-sendmail?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=csharp 

It would be great to have an option in the Output Data tool to write the workflow name to the Info properties of Excel outputs.

Maybe something like this:

So that whenever you open an Excel file you always have a way of finding the name of the workflow that created the file.

This would make it so much easier as I often have to share Excel files with colleagues and customers and then need a way of tracking them back to workflows weeks or months later.

Hi all,

When debugging an error, we need to verify tool by tool in a sequence to better understand what is really going on.

Sometimes the tools are miles away from each other. Imagine a gigantic workflow with a lot of connections going back and forth and wireless connections everywhere to help the workflow organization. Here is an example with more than 1300 tools: 

My idea is to have a shortcut showing all the previous/next tools and by selecting the previous/next one you go directly to them.

Something like this: 

What do you guys think about that?

Best,

Fernando Vizcaino

Hi there,

We often get the following error message from the download tool 

"00:00:23.555 - Error - ToolId 106: Error in libCURL: You have found a bug.  Replicate, then let us know.  We shall fix it soon."

Unfortunately this seems to be a transient error so we've not been able to replicate this in a useful & repeatable way.  However - we see this happening at least a few times per week on one of our servers, so this is a continuing issue.

Please could you provide more detailed error messaging on the download tool so that this error can be debugged and/or replicated?

Many thanks

Sean

TIBCO Data Virtualization is a Data Virtualization product focused on creating a virtual data store consolidating data from throughout the enterprise.  It can be accessed via a SQL query engine, and has a variety of supported connectors, including an ODBC driver.

This data source can be connected to via ODBC in Alteryx today, but error messaging is unclear/unhelpful, and attempting to use the Visual Query Builder causes Alteryx to crash.

Adding TIBCO Data Virtualization as a supported ODBC connection would empower business users to leverage this product and easily utilize this enterprise data store, enhancing the value of the Alteryx platform as a consumer of this data.

The Multi-Field formula tool has three really powerful features that it supports:

[_CurrentField_]

[_CurrentFieldName_]

[_CurrentFieldType_]

These are really powerful within Multi-Field formulas because they allow for a dynamic process to apply across multiple fields.

However, they would also be very helpful in regular formulas and Multi-Row formulas, for code transportability.

A basic example:  I have a Longitude field that is a string.  I need to set it to a value of 0 if there is a null value.

My formula today:

IF ISNULL([Longitude]) THEN 0 ELSE [Longitude] ENDIF

Now lets say I want to use the same formula somewhere else, but for Latitude instead.

 That formula looks like:

IF ISNULL([Latitude]) THEN 0 ELSE [Latitude] ENDIF

If I could use [_CurrentField_] instead, that would allow me to instead write both formulas as:

IF ISNULL([_CurrentField_]) THEN 0 ELSE [_CurrentField_] ENDIF

This code can easily be copied for any field that requires replacing Nulls with 0s, and doesn't require refactoring to use a Multi-Field formula instead.

This also means that if I later change my field name, the code will remain consistent.  This not only speeds up development time and flexibility, but more readily allows for validation that the existing code has not changed.

Currently - in order to run a series of Alteryx processes which have start-finish dependancies, you have to hack this by putting each sub-process into batch macros with fake inbound and outbound controls and a fake control parameter.   Additionally, alteryx forgets the mapping of parameters if you move stuff around, and you have to re-link it all up again, running each step 1 by 1 until the next one fails.

some may say "just use Block until done"

- this only partially solves the issue if your dependency chain is one deep (e.g. create the table; and then send a summary of errors found in the table)

- this doesn't create any ability to encapsulate flows to create simplicity - so it drives the user towards having increasingly bigger and more complex canvases

If we could create a new macro-type or container-type which just allows start-to-finish dependency chaining like a sub-procedure, and which just passes on what was in the input stream directly to the output stream - this would materially improve the ability to simplify flows; and at the same time it's a cheap and easy way to allow for detailed dependency and flow control.

Happy to talk through this live with the team if that makes sense?

Thank you

Sean

In the Gallery, the File Browse tool returns the file location on the server where the file was uploaded. This allows the file to then be read in as input to a workflow.

If you need the file path of the original file location, you have to add a Text Input for the user to manually add it.

In my case (#00293302), I used a chained app to populate a list box for the user to select the Sheet Names they would like to process through the application. Unfortunately, since I was not able to capture the original file location the application errored out. This is due to the second app using the file location on the server where the file was uploaded, which is provided by the first workflow. This file location (from the Browse tool) is a temporary file location, where inputs are immediately deleted after processing.

Want to test this out? Create an application where you Output the file path from a File Browse tool.

i know.....grrr, this doesn't match your original file location!

Thank you,

Mark

Hi,

     I would like to see Global Variable being made available in Alteryx. I have seen the Global Constant being made available under Workflow "User" configuration. But this is constant and needs to be defined at Design time.

How about a Process Id that needs to be auto genearted and the same needs to be available across the formula tools used with in the workflow.

With the continued growth of Graph Databases, it would be nice for Alteryx to creates a new tool set that would allow input/output connectors for Graph Databases like Neo4j which software tools like Pentaho and Talend already have.

Keith. 

It would be great if we users could have the ability, ideally in a simple interface (maybe workflow option) to create .yxi macro installers. This would allow us to create and really simple, quick and straightforward way on installing macros in Alteryx rather than having to copy into certain directories or add through the user settings.

I know we can edit the XML on @AdamR_AYX CREW Macro installers etc. but this would make it really simple for single macros.

I'm assume this might already be on the road map, but will be useful to discuss.

YXI Files Intro Blog: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Engine-Works-Blog/YXI-Files-in-Alteryx-10-5/ba-p/20773

Discussed briefly on Twitter by @Joe_Lipski, @chris_love @jdunkerley79 @danielbrun2 but probably better to bring the discussion here: https://twitter.com/Joe_Lipski/status/811907135516852224

I utilize the Workflow Events quite a bit, but the standard options fall short in a few critical cases.

For example: I use the events to send me an email after the workflow runs with errors.

Usually that is all I need.  But, I have run into a few situations where the workflow didn't run at all - thus, no email was sent.

One such instance was on our server.  While still initializing (before it even hit tool #1) the job hung.  It sat like that for over a day before I noticed that there were no jobs running through a particular worker at all and saw this one sitting there. 

A second such instance was recently when I changed Persistence Options and accidentally deleted the source for a scheduled job.  The workflow marked itself complete in the scheduler and gave an error message of "Corrupt: Internal Error in PersistenceContainer......"

I realize that these are unexpected events and application errors (which I've worked with support on); but it would add great value to have that fallback mechanism to let us know the error happened.

Understandably, it would probably take a lot of work to engineer a schedule monitor that would catch this - but I think it would be worthwhile.

One option to do this: have an Event to email or run a command if a workflow hasn't started within a certain grace period after its scheduled time.

Hi,

With multiple Workflows open, I'd like to be able to grab one of the Workflow tabs and drag it out on to the desktop.  This act would then cause a new Alteryx Window to open up with the Workflow that was pulled out.  Just like when you have multiple tabs open in I.E. and you drag a tab out and drop it on the desktop - you end up getting another I.E. opened up and the tab you dragged out is in the newly opened I.E.

This would be handy because I'm often wanting to copy/paste tools, formulas, etc. and it would be nice to do that w/o flipping from one tab to another.

I know I can right-click and open another Alteryx but when opening several - they all open in the same one.

Thanks,

Brad

I use a mouse which has a horizontal scroll wheel. This allows me to quickly traverse the columns of excel documents, webpages, etc.

This interaction is not available in Alteryx Designer and when working with wide data previews it would improve my UX drastically. 

While challenge 41 was fun to calculate weekdays between 2 dates, there should be a formula similar to networkdays in excel to do the same function